“Christ is the real medicine…There is no area that cannot be touched by his power; there is no evil that cannot find a remedy in him, no problem that is not resolved in him.” Pope Benedict XVI
The problem of human suffering is a great one. Cannot the God who promises us Heaven do something to relieve suffering on earth? Why do good people suffer? And, if the Scripture we read today in Hebrews is true, why doesn’t suffering teach obedience to everyone, and thus transform what is defective or evil in them into goodness?
Suffering
Probably, at some time in your life, when you have encountered suffering, you have pondered such questions.
God, for all his goodness, omnipotence, omniscience, and power, does not save us from suffering.
He didn’t save himself from suffering. Jesus was/is the second Person of the Trinity. He was the Word who designed the world…from the beginning. From the beginning he knew he would come…to make Eternal Life in Glory a possibility for all.
From the beginning he knew it would take his own suffering and death to make that happen.
It wasn’t that bad people misunderstood the Messiah, so he ended up crucified. It was that he ended up crucified because he understood bad people.
And good people.
Kerygma
Today’s reading from Hebrews could be considered the cinch pin of the book. It is as good of a proclamation of the essential kerygma (good news of salvation) as we might find. All last week the author of Hebrews built his case: Jesus is the Messiah, the One promised and foretold through Jewish history.
Now the core of the kerygma: Jesus suffered, died, and arose—so that you and I might have Eternal Life with God.
Still, I could imagine those reading this letter might say, “But this man Jesus died on a cross—like a criminal. How can that be HOW God saves us?” So the author ties what the Jewish converts or converts-to-be would know about the task of priests and sacrifice on the altar. They would know that through Jewish history priests were designated by God from birth and that their primary task was to offer sacrifice (of grain, birds, sheep, goats, cattle) to God as atonement (at-one-ment) for the sins of the people, in thanksgiving for God’s care, and as pleading for assistance. They would know the purpose of a priest was to offer sacrifice.
So now the author of Hebrews says,
In the days when he was in the Flesh,
he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears
to the one who was able to save him from death,
and he was heard because of his reverence.
Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered;
and when he was made perfect,
he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
In Suffering, the Joining of Justice and Mercy
I have spent all week trying to make what I do understand of this into something clear enough to help you understand. But Saint Pope John Paul II says it much better. This is from his second encyclical, Dives in Misericordia (The Mercy of God):
The cross of Christ on Calvary is also a witness to the strength of evil against the very Son of God, against the one who, alone among all the sons of men, was by his nature absolutely innocent and free from sin and whose coming into the world was untainted by the disobedience of Adam and the inheritance of original sin. And here, precisely in him, in Christ justice is done to sin at the price of his sacrifice, of his obedience “even unto death.” He who was without sin, “God made him to be sin for our sake.” Justice is also brought to bear upon death, which from the beginning of man’s history had been allied to sin. Death has justice done to it at the price of the death of the one who was without sin and who alone was able–by means of his own death–to inflict death upon death. In this way the cross of Christ, on which the Son, consubstantial with the Father, renders full justice to God, is also a radical revelation of mercy, or rather of the love that goes against what constitutes the very root of evil in the history of man: against sin and death.
The cross is the most profound condescension of God to man and to what man–especially in difficult and painful moments–looks on as his unhappy destiny. The cross is like a touch of eternal love upon the most painful wounds of man’s earthly existence; it is the total fulfillment of the messianic program that Christ once formulated in the synagogue at Nazareth…this program consisted in the revelation of merciful love for the poor, the suffering and prisoners, for the blind, the oppressed and sinners. (paragraph 8)
Made Perfect
Jesus, 100% God and 100% man, entered into the worst of the effects of sin—suffering and death. He did not stop or prevent them. Instead he took them and made the worst of the worst into the gateway to the best of the best: we, though only 100% human, can enter into the love life of the Holy Trinity.
We enter into it in part here and how. That’s called Grace and the Kingdom of God.
We someday enter into it fully. That’s called the Kingdom of Heaven and Eternal Life.
The Stigmata
I will close today with another quote from Pope Benedict:
“We must learn the need for suffering and for crises. We must put up with and transcend this suffering. Only in this way is life enriched. I believe that the fact the Lord bears the stigmata for eternity has a symbolic value. As an expression of the atrocity of suffering and death, today the stigmata are seals of Christ’s victory, of the full beauty of his victory and his love for us.”
Prayer:
Lord, suffering remains a great mystery to me. I don’t have answers that explain it enough. But I trust in You. I understand that your Passion, Death, and Resurrection did not take suffering away. Instead, they meant that You, our God, have suffered and died as we do. You are not God far away when we suffer. You are God very close. Perhaps your stigmata are to remind us that you deeply know our suffering, even now. Mother Teresa said, “When you suffer, that is the kiss of Jesus.” Lord, let all who suffer today also feel your Presence, the kiss of Your Love. Amen.
Quotes from Pope Benedict XVI from a publication of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Spiritual Thoughts Series. This one: Pope Benedict XVI: Sickness, 2010. USCCB Publication 7-137.
